Thursday, 22 July 2010

TweetIt’s so easy isn’t it, falling into bad habits. For me it’s a mixture of lack of time, laziness and doing anything for a quiet life. But over the next 6 weeks I’m going to try and break some bad habits that both the girls and I have got into.

Going to the loo

I hated potty training my eldest. I found it frustrating and stressful and, probably because of this, she took a long while to ‘get it’. Which is why I have deliberately put it off with my now 3yo. But she starts preschool in September so over the next 6 weeks I have to bite the bullet and feel the potty training pain! At the same time though, I plan to break my 4yos habit of holding on until she’s fit to burst. She can hold on for hours, which is not good for her, and I have struggled to get her to go at school. Because of this she continues to have regular accidents at school. I’m assuming that, by now, she probably feels that being ‘busting’ is normal. So to retrain her brain I am resorting to good, old fashioned bribery and have told her that every time she goes for a wee she can have a Party Ring. Hopefully then she will get used to the sensation of a comfortably full bladder and will go more regularly once she’s back at school.

Eating Well

I’ve been quietly ignoring the fact that my weight has been creeping up and up over the past year. However 2 things have happened this week to give me the wake up call I needed. Firstly, I went up a clothes size, to a size I never wanted to reach. Secondly, last weekend I had a really bad headache and spent much of the weekend in bed. It made me realise how important it is for me to be well, and in order to be in good health I have a responsibility to look after my body. So I am going to try really hard to eat better – not for purposes of vanity or to lose weight (although I hope this may be a happy consequence) but for my wellbeing.

And along with this I will be encouraging the girls to do the same. Again, through laziness, I have got into the routine of buying food for them that I know they will eat rather than encouraging them to try new things. So while we have some time I’m hoping to get the girls cooking and shopping for some new things to try.

Organisation

If I'm honest, the last 6 months have been a bit of a disorganised mess. As the business has grown, the housework has slipped and I have lost my control over things like the household paperwork, the clutter of the kids toys etc. So I need to regain a bit more structure. So rather than my normal laissez faire attitude, this holiday I’ll be planning things to do and making this visual so the girls know what we’re up to, to prevent the next 6 weeks just merging into one long lazy day. I’m also going to try and stay on top of the housework, using the little and often approach. And I’m going to get on top of the paperwork and the clutter, so that in September, when term starts again, I can start afresh as I mean to go on.

Me Time/Us Time

My evenings have ended up being the time when I work, blog, tweet, shop online, you name it – none of which is relaxing or has anything to do with my other half. Some evenings we sit on separate sofas on separate laptops with the TV on in the background – not exactly conducive to sparkling conversation and keeping the romance alive! So I want to reclaim my evenings – to do relaxing things like reading, taking a bath, having a conversation (shock horror!) and generally making time more time for me and us.

I don’t suppose any of this will be easy. I’m great at starting things – I’m not so great as a finisher. But as this quote from Doug Firebaugh nicely sums up: “Something must die in order to grow - your old habits, your old self image, your old thinking, your old life - must be weeded out for the seeds of success to grow.”